PSY-260 Exam 4: Practice Questions
1. When interrogating experiments, on which of the big validities should a person focus?
a. Internal validity
b. External validityc
c. Construct validity
d. Statistical validity
2. Which of the following cannot be found in a one-group, pretest/posttest design?
a. A random sample
b. A valid measure
c. A comparison group
d. A manipulation
3. Observer bias can threaten which of the following big validities?
a. Internal validity and construct validity
b. External validity and construct validity
c. Internal validity and external validity
d. Internal validity only
4. Dr. Morimoto is curious as to whether exposing people to violent video games causes them
to be more aggressive. He assigns half his participants to play a video game for five minutes
and the other half to play for seven minutes. He finds that there is no relationship between
playing the game longer and being more aggressive. What might be to blame for this null
effect?
a. A weak manipulation
b. An insensitive measure
c. A reverse confound
d. Ceiling effect
5. Dr. Sanderson is curious as to whether exposing people to violent video games causes them to
be more aggressive. She assigns half her participants to play a violent video game for 5 minutes
and the other half to play the same game for 25 minutes. Afterward, she has them play a board
game and has a well-trained coder determine whether they are very aggressive in their playing
style, barely aggressive, or not at all aggressive. She finds that a vast majority of her
participants, regardless of group assignment, are rated as very aggressive. This outcome would
be known as a/an:
a. Weak manipulation
b. Ceiling effect
c. Floor effect
d. Outlier
6. A confound that keeps a researcher from finding a relationship between two variables
is known as a/an:
a. Weak confound
b. Insensitive confound
c. Null confound
1. When interrogating experiments, on which of the big validities should a person focus?
a. Internal validity
b. External validityc
c. Construct validity
d. Statistical validity
2. Which of the following cannot be found in a one-group, pretest/posttest design?
a. A random sample
b. A valid measure
c. A comparison group
d. A manipulation
3. Observer bias can threaten which of the following big validities?
a. Internal validity and construct validity
b. External validity and construct validity
c. Internal validity and external validity
d. Internal validity only
4. Dr. Morimoto is curious as to whether exposing people to violent video games causes them
to be more aggressive. He assigns half his participants to play a video game for five minutes
and the other half to play for seven minutes. He finds that there is no relationship between
playing the game longer and being more aggressive. What might be to blame for this null
effect?
a. A weak manipulation
b. An insensitive measure
c. A reverse confound
d. Ceiling effect
5. Dr. Sanderson is curious as to whether exposing people to violent video games causes them to
be more aggressive. She assigns half her participants to play a violent video game for 5 minutes
and the other half to play the same game for 25 minutes. Afterward, she has them play a board
game and has a well-trained coder determine whether they are very aggressive in their playing
style, barely aggressive, or not at all aggressive. She finds that a vast majority of her
participants, regardless of group assignment, are rated as very aggressive. This outcome would
be known as a/an:
a. Weak manipulation
b. Ceiling effect
c. Floor effect
d. Outlier
6. A confound that keeps a researcher from finding a relationship between two variables
is known as a/an:
a. Weak confound
b. Insensitive confound
c. Null confound
